Gervais Hires ‘Go To’ Dwarf; Lovings Triumph Over Hate: Review

Richard and Mildred Loving were
unlikely civil rights warriors. He was shy and uncommunicative,
she was soft-spoken and gentle, and neither was schooled in
matters of politics and the law.

But their interracial marriage changed history, and Nancy
Buirski’s HBO (TWX) documentary “The Loving Story” is a timely
reminder that the most personal of all institutions is never
less than political.

Young small-town sweethearts -- he was white, she was black
and Native American -- the Lovings quietly married in
Washington, D.C. on June 2, 1958.

Back in their native Virginia, the couple were rousted from
bed by a local sheriff and charged with miscegenation, a felony.

The couple’s one-year jail sentence was suspended on the
condition that they leave Virginia (and their extended families)
forever.

“The Loving Story” recounts the fine points of the legal
battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967
decision striking down all anti-miscegenation laws.

The film implicitly invites comparisons to today’s battles
over gay marriage, while rare home movies and recent interviews
with the now-deceased couple’s lawyers and daughter add personal
perspective and intimacy to the film.

Still, the interior lives of Richard and Mildred remain
elusive. Even in home movies, they seem reticent, reminders of
an era before cameras became confessionals, when private people
entered the spotlight only when dragged there.

‘Life’s Too Short’

In HBO’s comic faux-documentary series “Life’s Too
Short,” Warwick Davis, Britain’s self-described “go-to
dwarf,” gets stuffed in a trash can and dons a ratty teddy bear
hide to recreate his glory days as an Ewok.

Written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant,
“Life’s Too Short” is the duo’s latest celebration of
humiliation as humor.

Best known for 1988’s “Willow,” Davis stands in lines
with Gervais’s characters in both the British version of “The
Office” and HBO’s “Extras” to take whatever pies his face has
coming.

The daily indignities (a passerby loudly compares him to
Verne “Mini-Me” Troyer) are ready-made for Gervais’ comic
vivisection. The cameras follow blustery Davis (he calls himself
the Martin Luther King of dwarves) as his marriage crumbles and
his acting career is reduced to pestering Gervais and Merchant
for minor roles.

Meanwhile, his fledgling business as a talent agent for
other dwarves falters, mostly because he grabs all auditions for
himself.

Celebrity Encounters

When the short stuff wears thin, Gervais and Merchant fall
back on their time-tested formula: Deflate their target’s
outsize ego via celebrity encounters.

Johnny Depp, said to be researching the title role of Tim Burton’s upcoming (fictional) production of “Rumpelstiltskin,”
asks Davis to stand in the toilet bowl to simulate the sewer-
dwelling fairy tale villain. Helena Bonham Carter demands that
Davis, working as stand-in for a child actor, deliver his lines
from a trash can so as not to impede her concentration.

Better is the first-episode appearance of Liam Neeson,
meeting with Gervais, Merchant and Davis to discuss a newfound
interest in a comedy career.

“I’m a funny guy,” says the stone-faced actor, before
launching into an intensely serious improv routine about AIDS.

Which just might be the funniest moment on a Gervais show
since David Bowie sang “Little Fat Man” on “Extras.”